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Here’s an upsetting statistic: approximately 800 women in developing countries die every day from preventable complications associated with pregnancy and childbirth. When Asa Nordgren and her co-founders realized that physicians were using their digital sonogram service Trice —originally invented as a way for doctors to avoid tedious printouts and CDs in Sweden — to collaborate remotely, they decided to pivot into the global healthcare market to help save women around the world.

Trice’s original product allowed doctors, nurses and midwives to send medical images directly from an imaging device to a patient’s cell phone. The system was all mobile. “You could connect your ultrasound device through the mobile network and send the data to any cell phone that could accept a text. This was very unique, making it possible to share images from rural villages where they have minimal access to doctors,” Nordgren explains. To show the value, Trice launched The Mobile Ultrasound Project with in Morocco, and demonstrated how the technology reduced diagnostic costs from $80 to $2 per patient, and reduced the time it took to get a diagnosis from two weeks to less than 24 hours.

They observed how customers were using the tools and built out more collaboration features based on how the technology was being used in the field. Now, physicians and other medical staff can collaborate, consult, and provide second opinions directly between any imaging device (such as MR, CT, Ultrasound, etc.) and any device with a browser such as smart phone, tablet or computer.

A patient in Morocco gets an ultrasound using Trice.

Nordgren attributes their success in part to the fact that the founders had no healthcare IT background. Instead of being led by the technology, she and her co-founders Johanna Wollert Melin (COO) and Martin Westin (CPO) approached the problem from a digital media and consumer-focused orientation. They listened to the needs of their customers and looked for the simplest way to meet their needs. Instead of being seen as a complicated IT solution, the fact that practitioners can simply put the recipient’s phone number and email address into the imaging device and hit ‘send’ – even from a moving vehicle – makes the technology superbly user-friendly and highly adaptable to a wide variety of field conditions.

The business model is simple too, and differentiates Trice from its competition. “Healthcare IT customers are used to large hardware investments, and unreasonably priced license and maintenance fees. They are used to healthcare IT projects being painfully long and quite expensive. There is no upfront fee for Trice technology. Instead, the customers pay per click. It works exactly as the cell phone business used to work; you buy a data plan. Instead of buying minutes however, you buy patient transactions. The installation of the Tricefy system takes 10 minutes and it is more or less self-explanatory.”

One unanticipated upside of Trice’s adoption is the environmental benefits. “Even larger hospitals with electronic medical records often print their ultrasound images, staple them on to another piece of paper, scan it, and manually upload it to the patient chart in the health record. With access to Trice technology, hospitals and practices can stop printing on thermal paper that is both toxic and expensive. In addition, cloud storage is included in our model so practices can stop using fire-proof cabinets to keep back-up paper records,” Nordgren notes.

With the technology nailed down, the Trice team is now setting its sights on the global health market, and clearly their success will be a win-win for women all over the world. “An estimated 50% of maternal deaths could be avoided if there were access to diagnostic expertise. Portable and cheaper ultrasound devices connected through the network can have a huge impact on maternal mortality. We are committed to lowering death rates by making it faster and more cost effective for women to receive these life-saving diagnoses.”

Trice’s story is a great example of how carefully listening to consumers can help your company pivot to success.